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Conservative Party (UK)

Conservative and Unionist Party
LeaderKemi Badenoch
Lords LeaderThe Lord True
Chief Whips
ChairmanNigel Huddleston
The Lord Johnson of Lainston
Chief ExecutiveStephen Massey[1]
Founded
  • 1834; 191 years ago (1834)
    (original form)
  • 9 May 1912; 112 years ago (1912-05-09)
    (current form)
Merger of
Preceded byTories
HeadquartersConservative Campaign Headquarters
4 Matthew Parker Street, London SW1H 9HQ
Youth wingYoung Conservatives[2]
Women's wingConservative Women's Organisation
Overseas wingConservatives Abroad
LGBT wingLGBT+ Conservatives
Membership (November 2024)Decrease 131,680[3]
Ideology
Political positionCentre-right to right-wing
International affiliationInternational Democracy Union
Irish affiliation
Colours  Sky blue
SloganRenew and Rebuild (2024)[11][12]
Governing bodyConservative Party Board
Devolved or semi-autonomous branches
Parliamentary party1922 Committee
House of Commons
121 / 650
House of Lords
272 / 799
Scottish Parliament
31 / 129
Senedd
16 / 60
Regional mayors[nb]
1 / 14
London Assembly
8 / 25
PCCs and PFCCs
19 / 37
Local mayors
1 / 13
Councillors[nb][13]
5,113 / 18,766
Councils led
82 / 371
Website
conservatives.com
  • ^ Councillors of local authorities in England (including 25 aldermen of the City of London) and Scotland, principal councils in Wales and local councils in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative and Unionist Party, commonly the Conservative Party and colloquially known as the Tories,[14] is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. The party sits on the centre-right[21] to right-wing[28] of the political spectrum. Following defeat by Labour in the 2024 general election, it is currently the second largest political party by the number of votes cast and number of seats in the House of Commons, followed by the Liberal Democrats. As the second largest party, it has the formal parliamentary role of the Official Opposition. It encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatives. There have been twenty Conservative prime ministers. The party traditionally holds the annual Conservative Party Conference during party conference season, at which senior Conservative figures promote party policy.

The Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party and was one of two dominant political parties in the 19th century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli, it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire. In 1912, the Liberal Unionist Party merged with the party to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. Rivalry with the Labour Party has shaped modern British politics for the last century. David Cameron sought to modernise the Conservatives after his election as leader in 2005, and the party governed from 2010 to 2024 under five prime ministers, latterly Rishi Sunak.

The party has generally adopted liberal economic policies favouring free markets since the 1980s, although historically it advocated for protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing a united Ireland as well as Scottish and Welsh independence, and has been critical of devolution. Historically, the party supported the continuance and maintenance of the British Empire. The party has taken various approaches towards the European Union (EU), with eurosceptic and, to a decreasing extent, pro-European factions within it. Historically, the party took a socially conservative approach.[29][30] In defence policy, it supports an independent nuclear weapons programme and commitment to NATO membership.

For much of modern British political history, the United Kingdom exhibited a wide urban–rural political divide;[31] the Conservative Party's voting and financial support base has historically consisted primarily of homeowners, business owners, farmers, real estate developers and middle class voters, especially in rural and suburban areas of England.[32][33][34][35][36] Since the EU referendum in 2016, the Conservatives targeted working class voters from traditional Labour strongholds.[37][38][39][40] The Conservatives' domination of British politics throughout the 20th century made it one of the most successful political parties in the Western world.[41][42][43][44] The most recent period of Conservative government was marked by extraordinary political turmoil.[45]

  1. ^ Croft, Ethan (11 November 2022). "Rishi Sunak donor gets top job with the Tories". Evening Standard. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  2. ^ Wilkins, Jessica (17 March 2018). "Conservatives re-launch youth wing in a bid to take on Labour". PoliticsHome.com. Archived from the original on 9 July 2019. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  3. ^ Walker, Peter (2 November 2024). "Kemi Badenoch wins Tory leadership election". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 November 2024.
  4. ^ "Capping welfare and working to control immigration". Conservative and Unionist Party. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 1 July 2016.
  5. ^ [4]
  6. ^ Bale, Tim (2011). The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron. p. 145.
  7. ^ [6]
  8. ^ David Dutton, "Unionist Politics and the aftermath of the General Election of 1906: A Reassessment." Historical Journal 22#4 (1979): 861–76.
  9. ^ McConnel, James (17 February 2011). "Irish Home Rule: An imagined future". BBC. Archived from the original on 4 August 2021. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  10. ^ [8][9]
  11. ^ Boulton, Adam (1 October 2024). "Tory party conference is a peculiar affair". Reaction. Archived from the original on 2 October 2024. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
  12. ^ Timan, Joseph (2 October 2024). "'I thought I'd see lots of sad Tories at the Conservative conference – only the weather was miserable'". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
  13. ^ "Open Council Data UK". opencouncildata.co.uk. Archived from the original on 30 April 2021. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  14. ^ Buchan, Lizzy (12 November 2018). "What does Tory mean and where does this term come from?". The Independent. Archived from the original on 9 July 2022. Retrieved 29 November 2023.
  15. ^ Bale, Tim (2018). "Who leads and who follows? The symbiotic relationship between UKIP and the Conservatives – and populism and Euroscepticism". Politics. 38 (3): 263–277. doi:10.1177/0263395718754718. ISSN 0263-3957. This article makes clear that UKIP's achievement cannot be understood without taking into account both the populist interventions and the internal politics of its mainstream centre-right competitor. We cannot, in other words, understand populist Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom unless we appreciate that, as this article has shown, the Conservatives, not UKIP, were the United Kingdom's first populist Eurosceptic party...
  16. ^ Webb, Paul; Bale, Tim (2014). "Why Do Tories Defect to UKIP? Conservative Party Members and the Temptations of the Populist Radical Right". Political Studies. 62 (4): 961–970. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.12130. ISSN 0032-3217. For one thing, as we have already suggested, the problems posed by UKIP for the Conservatives are akin to those posed to other European centre-right parties by populist radical right challengers: there is no prima facie reason to think that if large numbers of the Tory rank-and-file are considering switching their vote to UKIP that the same does not apply to, say, members of the ÖVP in Austria (who might switch to the FPÖ), or of the Dutch VVD and CDA (who might vote for the PVV), or of Denmark's Venstre (who might cast their ballot for the DF), or of KOK in Finland (who might be tempted by the Finns Party), or even of the French UMP (who might plump for Marine Le Pen's FN).
  17. ^ Ford, Robert; Goodwin, Matthew J.; Cutts, David (2012). "Strategic Eurosceptics and polite xenophobes: Support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2009 European Parliament elections". European Journal of Political Research. 51 (2): 204–234. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.01994.x. ISSN 0304-4130. The more strident Euroscepticism of the Conservative Party under David Cameron, who has withdrawn the party from the pro-integration European People's Party, appointed the strongly Eurosceptic William Hague as foreign secretary and at the 2010 general election fielded the most Eurosceptic slate of Westminster candidates in recent history, suggest the centre-right Tories have recognised the discontent among strategic UKIP supporters and are attempting to win them back.
  18. ^ Carter, Neil; Pearson, Mitya (22 November 2022). "From green crap to net zero: Conservative climate policy 2015–2022". British Politics. 19: 154–174. doi:10.1057/s41293-022-00222-x. ISSN 1746-918X. PMC 9684876. PMID 38625241. European centre-right parties often face common strategic challenges, such as competition from the radical right, but the UK Conservative Party case study shows that responding to these challenges does not necessarily demand the abandonment of climate commitments.
  19. ^ Evans, Geoffrey; de Geus, Roosmarijn; Green, Jane (2023). "Boris Johnson to the Rescue? How the Conservatives Won the Radical-Right Vote in the 2019 General Election". Political Studies. 71 (4): 984–1005. doi:10.1177/00323217211051191. ISSN 0032-3217. ...By the 2019 election, however, support for UKIP and its successor anti-EU party, the Brexit Party, was effectively ended, at least for the time being. The primary beneficiaries of this electoral elimination were the Conservative Party – the mainstream centre–right party.
  20. ^ Abou-Chadi, Tarik; Cohen, Denis; Wagner, Markus (2021). "The centre-right versus the radical right: the role of migration issues and economic grievances". Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 48 (2): 366–384. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2020.1853903. Specifically, the centre-right contains Christian Democratic parties such as the German CDU, Conservative parties such as the British Tories or the French Gaullists, and classically Liberal parties such as Venstre in Denmark or the VVD in the Netherlands.
  21. ^ [15][16][17][18][19][20]
  22. ^ Keating, Michael (2024). "Scotland's Constitutional Odyssey". In Cremades, Javier; Hermida, Cristina (eds.). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Constitutionalism. London/Berlin: Springer Nature. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31739-7. ISBN 978-3-319-31739-7. It was also, like the Labour Party at the same time, able to play the European center-left against the dominant rightwing Conservative Party.
  23. ^ Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J. (February 2023). "Do Opportunistic Snap Elections Affect Political Trust? Evidence from a Natural Experiment". European Journal of Political Research. 62 (1). New York/Oxford: Wiley: 308–325. doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12531. H2a assumes right-leaning voters are congruent with the incumbent right-wing Conservative party
  24. ^ Bale, Tim (March 2023). The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation. Cambridge: Polity. pp. 3–8, 291, et passim. ISBN 9781509546015. Archived from the original on 14 September 2023. Retrieved 12 September 2023. [...] rather than the installation of a supposedly more 'technocratic' cabinet halting and even reversing any transformation on the part of the Conservative Party from a mainstream centre-right formation into an ersatz radical right-wing populist outfit, it could just as easily accelerate and accentuate it. Of course, radical right-wing populist parties are about more than migration and, indeed, culture wars more generally. Typically, they also put a premium on charismatic leadership and, if in office, on the rights of the executive over other branches of government and any intermediate institutions. And this is exactly what we have seen from the Conservative Party since 2019
  25. ^ de Geus, Roosmarijn A.; Shorrocks, Rosalind (2022). "Where Do Female Conservatives Stand? A Cross-National Analysis of the Issue Positions and Ideological Placement of Female Right-Wing Candidates". In Och, Malliga; Shames, Shauna; Cooperman, Rosalyn (eds.). Sell-Outs or Warriors for Change? A Comparative Look at Conservative Women in Politics in Democracies. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. pp. 1–29. ISBN 9781032346571. right-wing parties are also increasing the presence of women within their ranks. Prominent female European leaders include Theresa May (until recently) and Angela Merkel, from the right-wing Conservative Party in the UK and the Christian Democratic Party in Germany respectively.
  26. ^ Alonso, José M.; Andrews, Rhys (September 2020). "Political Ideology and Social Services Contracting: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design" (PDF). Public Administration Review. 80 (5). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell: 743–754. doi:10.1111/puar.13177. S2CID 214198195. In particular, there is a clear partisan division between the main left-wing party (Labour) and political parties with pronounced pro-market preferences, such as the right-wing Conservative Party
  27. ^ Alzuabi, Raslan; Brown, Sarah; Taylor, Karl (October 2022). "Charitable behaviour and political affiliation: Evidence for the UK". Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. 100. Amsterdam: Elsevier: 101917. doi:10.1016/j.socec.2022.101917. ...alignment to the Liberal Democrats (centre to left wing) and the Green Party (left wing) are positively associated with charitable behaviour at both the extensive and intensive margins, relative to being aligned with the right wing Conservative Party.
  28. ^ [22][23][24][25][26][27]
  29. ^ Hartley-Brewer, Julia (25 July 2000). "Section 28". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 February 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  30. ^ Special, Keep Sunday (12 June 2020). "Keep Sunday Special: Why Sunday trading regulations need to stay". Conservative Home. Archived from the original on 5 December 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  31. ^ "Europe-wide political divide emerging between cities and countryside – study". Bennett Institute for Public Policy. 16 August 2021. Archived from the original on 28 April 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  32. ^ "Why the UK has no clear party of business". theconversation.com. 10 December 2019. Archived from the original on 2 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  33. ^ "How Tory dominance is built on home ownership". New Statesman. 12 May 2021. Archived from the original on 11 May 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  34. ^ "Tories have unhealthy financial reliance on property developers, says report | Housing". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  35. ^ "Conservatives 'receive donations worth £17,500 a day from developers'". The Independent. 30 July 2021. Archived from the original on 2 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  36. ^ "Why some farmers are turning away from the Tories". BBC News. 25 May 2022. Archived from the original on 25 October 2022. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  37. ^ "Tories won more working class votes than Labour amid stark generation gap at general election, poll suggests". The Independent. 17 December 2019. Archived from the original on 16 August 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  38. ^ Mueller, Benjamin (13 December 2019). "How Labour's Working-Class Vote Crumbled and Its Nemesis Won the North". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 September 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  39. ^ Garcha, Ciara (3 April 2021). "The Conservatives' attack on the ECHR: A Long Time Coming". Cherwell. Archived from the original on 23 December 2021. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
  40. ^ "How the Tories became the party of the working class". The Independent. 22 October 2021. Archived from the original on 2 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  41. ^ Steve Coulter (10 April 2011). "Book Review: The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron". Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
  42. ^ Philip Johnston (19 April 2016). "The Conservative Party may be destroyed by this European madness". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 23 June 2016. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
  43. ^ Andrew Gimson (15 May 2017). "Why the Tories keep winning". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017. Retrieved 18 October 2017.
  44. ^ "The Sordid Story of the Most Successful Political Party in the World". The New Republic. 23 February 2021. ISSN 0028-6583. Archived from the original on 2 October 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  45. ^ James, Liam; Middleton, Joe; Dalton, Jane (11 January 2023). "Boris Johnson's biggest scandals: a timeline". The Independent. Archived from the original on 4 July 2024. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
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